The study, published in the peer-reviewed, open-access scientific journal PLoS ONE, shows that strandings of young seal pups in Atlantic Canada have increased as sea ice cover as declined, whereas adult mortality has not. The study also found that pup mortality was unaffected by genetic fitness, indicating that not only the “weakest” pups are affected by climate change.

An earlier study published last year that found seasonal sea ice cover in all four harp seal breeding regions in the North Atlantic has declined by up to 6 percent a decade since 1979, when satellite records of ice conditions in the region began.

The latest research clearly shows that the effects of climate change are most devastating for younger animals, affecting them in the crucial first year of life.